Monday 8th of July on Alderney was going to be warm and sunny. Vagn and I took the bikes and headed for an island around tour. We were going to visit all forts of Alderney. Breathtaking scenery often made us stop to enjoy the views.
There were many wild and bright flowers around, sometimes on the rocks:
Some of the fortresses were in ruins, a couple of them were privately owned and undergoing restoration work.
The Clonque Bay and Fort Tourgis far away, seen from a very steep trail called zig-zag. I didn’t dare to bike down those slopes, and had to carry my bike instead…
On our way, there was a typical Nazi bunker from the WWII time:
Fort Clonque was accessible, and we visited it:
It was much more hard to bike to the fortresses than we expected, and we decided to have a small break in St. Anne – the capital and the main town of the island.
St. Anne town had some old cobbled streets – very charming, but not much bikes friendly!
One of the shops was selling handmade clocks with the numbers ending on “ish”, like 7ish, 8ish, and so on. Vagn loved the clocks, and I thought he had to buy one – because Vagn is (almost) always at least one hour late. I didn’t say that to him, just did my best, mentioning that the clocks were made of local materials, by a local artisan, that they were incredibly beautiful and would be the best memory from the island of Alderney one could get. I thought all that worked, but the price of 31 GBP – I couldn’t give Vagn a discount.
Victoria street of St. Anne, founded in 1836, with shops and restaurants:
We stopped for lunch at the Georgian House restaurant. The food was delicious, we had local fish and veggies. The service was friendly but very slow, though they had enough of staff. The whole lunch took 2 hours, and most of that was waiting time.
We finished our lunch with coffee and ice-cream:
After lunch, Vagn went shopping for some practical things to be used for his aircraft, and I did some sightseeing. There was a WWI and WWII memorial:
Before entering, one could read a following sign:
It was first time, I saw such a sign asking for a behaviour with respect – maybe other places should be inspired by it. There was also a small roses garden with a sign “Kevin Dawes, beloved brother, uncle and friend. Alderney’s best gardener”:
We often saw plates or signs, mostly on benches around the island, with a text saying something nice about people who lived on the island and passed away.
Fort Raz, unaccessible by its road during high tides:
I got a bit closer to take this photo:
We did only 20 km that day, but it felt like 50 – because we had to go off-road, and also all those steep roads took lots of power, at least from me!
We were damn tired, when we got back to our camp. But it was a very enjoyable day!